


Futility

by love_killed_the_superstar



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Egg Laying, F/F, Gem Egg Hell, Gem War, Gen, Minor Character Death, Miscarriage, Oviposition, but if i do a sequel things might get better who knows, this isn't particularly happy at all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 08:29:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5283830
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/love_killed_the_superstar/pseuds/love_killed_the_superstar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even a pearl would know that giving birth on a battlefield was bound to end in disaster.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Futility

**Author's Note:**

> Haha you know how most of my gem egg hell fics are cute and fluffy, or are at least angsty with a bit of fluff?? Inspiration took me somewhere different this time. Because I figure if gems were to have babies during the war, things would be pretty terrible.  
> Also apologies to Pearl for always putting her through so much shit in my fanfics, I love you really bab

“Have you seen Pearl?”

This wasn't the first time during this battle that Rose had asked the question, upon stumbling into Garnet again, who once again shook her head. It was a rare sight to see Rose in battle without Pearl at her side, whether defending her with her life or already tucked inside Rose's gem.

“I can check for you if you want,” Garnet offered as the emerald she had been fighting collapsed under the pressure of her gauntlets and retreated into her gem in a rather impressive green-tinged puff of smoke.

“Please. I'm worried about her.”

Rose Quartz could sense that something was off about Pearl these past few lunar cycles, noting that she had taken to wearing human cloaks and armour three sizes too big, and tactfully avoiding Rose. Maybe she should have known better, given that Pearl had managed to avoid retreating into her gem for quite some time, but when it came down to it she was just grateful that Pearl was finally taking care of herself. It didn't explain why Pearl was avoiding her, but Rose vowed that if she could just make it through this last battle she'd ask for an explanation, she'd take Pearl into her arms and _communicate._

 

…

 

Pearl, meanwhile, was trying not to cry. War was never something that had bothered her; in fact, it was empowering until recently. But she was just so _tired._ Her entire body ached, her gem pulsed, her eyes blurred. The armour wouldn't protect her brood forever, she knew that, and she also knew if Rose knew she would remove her from the battle immediately. That was a loss they couldn't afford, since their armies were low enough in numbers as it was.

She was fighting off an amethyst, who for once wasn't underestimating her based on the fact that she was a pearl. At this point, Homeworld fleets were probably aware that this pearl in particular could hold her own in battle. The amethyst in question was well on it's way to bulldozing her, and she had to move fast. If there was even the smallest chance of her sword breaking or her armour being crushed, it would be all over.

“You think just because you learned to wield a sword it means you've won?” spat the amethyst, swinging her weapon high over her head. “Homeworld will _crush_ a defective pearl like you!”

“I'd love to see you try!” Pearl countered. This was bad, this was very bad. There was little she could do at this point, besides running, but she was backed very close to a large rock, leaving her nowhere to escape to.

“You asked for it, you filthy pearl,” grunted the amethyst, and the bulldozer swung down, effectively slamming into her. She gasped out in pain as she felt an agonising crunch inside of her. She wailed but held on, couldn't poof, _wouldn't poof,_ and quickly stumbled back up to her feet. The amethyst went to follow her, intent on smashing her gem this time, but stopped in her tracks and stared.

“Holy shit,” she whispered. Pearl looked down. There was an odd liquid pooling down from the gaps in her armour, thick and translucent, with the faint tinge of blue.

Blood.

The amethyst stared, unsure what to make of it (Pearl doubted this amethyst had ever seen a gravid gem before, and knew not of the fluids their membranes carried), and Pearl thrust her sword straight in between the amethyst's eyes. She poofed in an instant, and Pearl bit back another cry as she crawled back behind the rock. It had opened out into a shallow cave, the perfect nook of cover she needed at this moment. With a sob, she began yanking the human armour from her body. Her abdomen, swollen with eggs, felt shredded with agony, and she smoothed a shaking hand across it.

“What do I do?” she asked nobody in particular, still grossly sobbing as she pulled away the last of her armour. There was quite a bit of the fluid pouring out of her, stained blue with blood where it should have been a pale white like her gem. She feared the worst. “Rose, what do I do?”

It was inevitable that this wouldn't turn out well. Even a pearl would know that giving birth on a battlefield was bound to end in disaster.

 

…

 

Garnet scoured the east corner of the battle, eyes scanning for any sign of Pearl. There were other pearls fighting, of course, and doing a poor job of it (as a matter of fact, she was surprised there were any still standing at this point), but none wore the armour emblazoned with scratches and chips and gem dust that _their_ pearl wore so proudly. The last she had seen of Pearl in her future vision, she was being pursued by an amethyst, but that was nearly twenty minutes ago and who knew how much could have happened since then?

She spotted the rocks she had seen in that snatch of future vision and beelined for it, figuring the last place she had seen Pearl would be a good place to start. On the way she fought off a trio of topazes set on poofing her – or at least getting her to unfuse. Not gonna happen.

As she approached, she heard a startled shout.

“Don't! D-Don't come any closer!”

“What the fuck...?”

Garnet crept around and spotted an amethyst, looking too clean to have been reformed for very long. She was holding a bulldozer above her head, but Garnet could tell from the tension of her body that she was extremely disturbed by whatever she was looking at.

“I said stay away from me!” The voice was undoubtedly Pearl's, and Garnet wasted no time in reaching around and crushing the amethyst's skull in her gauntlets. Once the smoke that burst forth from the amethyst's physical form had faded, Garnet caught the gem and bubbled it before meeting Pearl's gaze. Then she stared.

The first thing she saw was the terrified look in her eyes, closely followed by the enlarged curve of her abdomen, and finally the sticky fluid pooling around her, watered down slightly with cyan blood. Immediately it all clicked, and she exhaled.

“Oh, Pearl,” she said softly, her gauntlets vanishing, and Pearl teared up.

“I-I-I'm sorry,” she wept, beginning to breathe heavily. “Please don't tell Rose! P-Please don't tell her, I'm begging you-”

“You shouldn't be here,” Garnet hissed, squatting down beside her. She tugged a nearby boulder in front of the cave entrance, sealing them in for the meantime. “If you're carrying you shouldn't be in this battle-”

“I-I know, Garnet, I know,” Pearl cried, and she screwed her eyes up in pain, leaning back and hissing. “B-But we can't afford anyone to sit out, and I can still fight!”

“Not like this,” Garnet ground out. “You're giving birth, Pearl! Don't you understand what that means?! You are having Rose's clutch _here_ -” She gestured around her. “And she doesn't even know about it!”

Pearl dissolved into more tears, her entire body wracked with sobs. “I couldn't tell her! She's supposed to be leading the rebellion a-and I'm supposed to protect her! If she knew...” She scrubbed at her eyes. “If the gems in this rebellion knew that she had mated with a _pearl_...”

Ah. So that was it.

While the rebellion was made up of gems against Homeworld, everyone had their reasons, and a lot of them weren't necessarily thrilled that Rose had taken a shining to a defective pearl with a self-sacrificing streak that caused more trouble than anything. In a way, Pearl was right; if the gems in their rebellion discovered Pearl was pregnant, and by Rose no doubt, it would certainly cause an uproar.

“Okay,” sighed Garnet. She tapped into the future to witness the outcome of the battle. While it would end a little faster with her there, the battle was almost over anyway. No more fatalities would come from this fight. In that case, it was up to her to help Pearl out. “I'll stay with you, since I doubt you've ever delivered a clutch before.”

Pearl shook her head and squirmed in pain as another contraction hit. Her face was clammy with sweat and tears, and Garnet noted that the puddle of bloody membrane fluid was beginning to widen.

“I don't understand why there is so much blood,” Garnet said with a frown. “Did you get hurt?”

“That amethyst,” grunted Pearl, palming the side of her distended stomach. “I-I thought my armour would protect me... protect the eggs...”

Garnet grimaced.

“All right. Come on, phase off your clothes. I need to see what we're dealing with here.”

Pearl's cheeks darkened, but she obliged, and Garnet tugged her thin legs apart impatiently. When she saw Pearl's offending egg hole, flushed raw and leaking, she looked away.

“The shell is cracked,” she muttered.

“What does that mean?” Pearl whimpered. Garnet forced herself to look back at the pearl egg, innocent in the futility of this war, cracked and oozing a nacre-like substance.

“The membrane in the egg is running, it's escaping. This gem isn't going to form.”

“No,” Pearl gasped, and she clutched her stomach, fresh tears building in her eyes. “No, no no no no-”

“Pearl, stay with me,” Garnet said sternly. “There may be more that are cracked. It would explain the blood... you have to lay them, even if they can't survive. Do you understand that?”

“I don't,” snapped Pearl, starting to sob again. “I don't, th-they can't be _gone_ just like that-”

“I didn't say all of them,” Garnet promised. She put a cool hand to Pearl's cheek and brought her back to her senses. “Listen to me. We won't know for sure how many are survivors if you don't give birth to them, so for their sakes, find that strength within you.”

“I can't,” whimpered Pearl, and she let out another sob as the pain came again. “I-I can't, I'm sorry-”

“You must,” urged Garnet.

The pearl egg had lost most of it's filling, and now a powder was seeping out that Garnet knew to be the unformed gem. She sighed. That gem did not deserve to die because of Pearl's recklessness, and yet she could bring herself to hate the gem lying in front of her, crying pitifully. Pearl was a child compared to Ruby and Sapphire, and Rose too – she was barely three thousand years old, and she had a lot to learn. This was her first clutch, and she had handled the situation as badly as any pearl that wasn't designed for breeding might. Though she wasn't to know, Garnet felt a prickle of anger inflicted towards herself for not foreseeing this could happen.

“Come on, Pearl. You can do this.”

Pearl snivelled pathetically and bore down the next time the pressure rolled through her, and after a few intense pushes the first egg left her body. Garnet caught it but knew that it was inevitable that this poor gemling wouldn't make it, and instead set it to one side, wiping the gem powder and membrane from her hands on her thighs before squeezing Pearl's knee comfortingly.

“Good job,” she soothed, “you did it, you laid the first. Do you know how many there are?”

“A-At least six,” Pearl sobbed, and she clutched at her abdomen again. “Ah- I-I think there's another one...”

Another was in position, this time a deep pink that could only be one of Rose's.

“You have some of rose's eggs too,” breathed Garnet.

“N-No,” cried Pearl, beginning to shake. “That can't be, p-pearls aren't capable of-”

“Often if a gem is carrying a clutch of gems too big for the physical body to handle, it can induce the laying so that the carrying gem doesn't lose their form,” Garnet muttered. She met Pearl's stricken gaze. “Pearl, how old is this clutch?”

“F-Four months,” she admitted, smoothing a clammy hand against her gem in an attempt to cool it. The exertion of the laying was overworking her gem, leaving it itchy and hot. “Four months and three days... i-is that bad? Garnet?”

Four months was much too short for a clutch to be fully developed. Gems varied, with pearls being quite fast developers while quartz eggs took a lot more time, and the imbalance could have been a strain on Pearl's body; having to accommodate to two completely different types of gems growing at the same time but at different rates surely would have been a lot for her to handle.

“I don't know how many of these we can save, Pearl,” Garnet admitted. “But we have to try. Can you do that for me?”

Pearl nodded weakly in reply.

 

…

 

At last, it was over.

They could hear the faint din of survivors, picking up weaponry and discarded gems, scooping up gem shards, shouting for their comrades. Garnet was glad they were still in the confines of the cave. If they were outside, they might have heard Rose calling for them.

Pearl was lying back with her eyes closed, breathing shallowly. She was still losing blood, even now that the clutch was laid, and her gem was cloudy with the exertion. Garnet glanced between her and the severely damaged clutch, trying to find a future where everything worked out from here. The clutch was dead, and Pearl was fading fast.

Well, all had died but one. Garnet inspected the tiny pearl egg, dangerously fragile. Garnet had no idea if this little gem would form; it may have been that the pearls were developing at the same rate as the rose quartz eggs, in which case it would be impossible for the pearl to be alive. But there was a hope that they had stopped growing earlier, had reached their final stage of development, and it was another factor that had induced the laying. In short, it was all an unfortunate melting pot of events that had killed this brood, and Garnet wasn't sure if they would have lived even if the amethyst hadn't smashed Pearl's body with the bulldozer.

“You did well, Pearl,” murmured Garnet. She gently rubbed Pearl's front in a poor attempt to comfort her.

“They died,” Pearl said dully. “They all died, and that's my fault.” She covered her eyes, but Garnet could feel her body tremble as she tried not to cry. “If Rose ever found out...”

“Going into battle was reckless, but if your laying was induced by other factors, that much is beyond your control. They might not have survived anyway.”

Pearl said nothing, but she drew her legs up close to her and curled up, still oozing diluted blood. She was shivering more violently now.

“One of them was unharmed,” Garnet murmured. “She could live.”

“No she can't. Not in this war.” Pearl hid her face. “She wouldn't survive a day.”

“So what do you suggest, Pearl?” Garnet asked, already knowing what she would say. She still dared her to speak those fateful words, though, just to see how strongly she felt.

“Kill her,” came Pearl's chilling reply. “We have to kill her.”

“There has to be another way,” Garnet said fiercely.

“No. Rose can't know about her. This war would kill her, and she would kill Rose.”

Her voice was beginning to get fainter.

“Pearl, I have to take you to Rose. She needs to know so she can heal you.”

“Garnet, poof me. Please,” begged Pearl. “I-I can heal up on my own, but... I can't reach my sword...”

Garnet closed her eyes and swallowed.

“Are you sure?”

“It'll just be like the end of any other battle, right?” Pearl said softly, eyelids drooping in exhaustion. “I got poofed by an amethyst. You found my gem. Just bring me back to Rose and it'll be all right...”

It was far from all right, but Garnet knew deep down that Pearl had a point. If Rose discovered the truth behind what had happened, there was no telling what she would do. Most of the futures weren't looking very good.

“You did well,” Garnet said, the same soft monotone she used before, and summoned her gauntlets. She slammed a fist down on Pearl's chest, and she exploded into a cloud of chalky gem dust. Her gem fell to the ground and Garnet turned to the tiny pearl egg, vulnerable and alone, nestled between its broken sisters.

 _There had to be another way, there had to._ Garnet closed her eyes and raised her fist.

…They never spoke of it again.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Garnet is the best friend a gem could ask for  
> So this is deliberately an open ending, interpret it however you feel. Does Garnet kill the gemling? Does she decide to give it a chance? We just don't know


End file.
